London, United Kingdom – As anti-Muslim hate crimes increase in Britain, so does biased coverage of Muslims in the media, a new study suggests.
The Center for Media Monitoring, a nonprofit that examines how Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, said in a report released Monday that of about 40,000 articles it evaluated from 30 outlets, 70 percent associated Muslims or Islam with negative aspects or behaviors.
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“As the largest study of its kind ever carried out in the UK, this report presents deeply worrying evidence of structural bias in how Muslims are portrayed in the UK press,” said Rizwana Hamid, the group’s director.
The report states that almost half of the articles published about Muslims in the UK, or around 20,000, contained a “high degree of bias”.
The data points to a “systemic problem within our media ecosystem,” Hamid said. “When entire communities are repeatedly framed through lenses of suspicion or threat, it inevitably shapes public attitudes, political debate and the daily lives of British Muslims.”
The report found that news organizations addressing the concerns and interests of right-wing voters in Britain were more likely to produce biased coverage of Muslims.
The organization named The Spectator magazine and GB News television channel as the “worst in all five bias categories” (negative coverage, generalizations, misrepresentations, contextual omissions and problematic headlines), as well as newspapers such as The Telegraph, Jewish Chronicle, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mail and The Times.
“Harmful coverage is not incidental among these media outlets,” the report reads.
At the other end of the scale, the media least likely to produce biased coverage maligning Muslims and their faith were: ITV, the Metro newspaper, the BBC, the Palestinian Authority news agency, The Guardian, The Associated Press, the London Evening Standard and Sky News.
Rise of racism with echoes of the past
The study was published at a time when Muslims in Britain face growing hostility, partly due to the growing popularity of far-right public figures and growing anti-immigration sentiment.
“Extensive research has shown correlations between negative representations of Muslims and increases in hate crimes, employment discrimination, and support for restrictive policies,” the report says.
In October, the United Kingdom reported that religious hate crimes against Muslims increased by 19 percent during the year ending March 2025 compared to the previous period. The Home Office said anti-Muslim hate crimes increased after the 2024 Southport mass stabbing at a girls’ dance class, which agitators on social media had blamed on a fictitious Muslim migrant.
Recently, mosques have been attacked, and British Muslims, as well as other minority ethnic groups, have reported a growing sense of unrest and insecurity as sentiment of nationalism grows in line with the growth of the far-right Reform UK party.
Observers said the type of racism returning to the UK has echoes of discrimination witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told ITV late last year it was “tearing our country apart”.
The Center for Media Monitoring said that in one example it studied, right-wing media amplified a claim by US President Donald Trump that London was governed by “Sharia law.”
In September, Trump told the United Nations General Assembly: “I look at London, where there is a terrible, terrible, terrible mayor, and it has changed. It has changed so much… Now they want to adopt Sharia law. But you are in a different country. You can’t do that.”
While The Metro verified the claim and The Independent provided contextualized commentary, “opinion outlets such as the Daily Express went further in treating the conspiracy as credible,” the report said.
“Presenting unfounded claims as talking points normalizes misinformation and fuels anti-Muslim narratives, underscoring the media’s responsibility to decisively challenge falsehoods rather than inadvertently legitimize them,” the group said.
